Integral Yoga and Evolutionary Mutation - Its Aid to Humanity and Human Species - Human History and the Problems of the Harmony

PART TWO

Human History and the Problems of the Harmony between the Individual and the Collectivity

The spiritual consciousness is spontaneously universal, and spirituality, in its embrace of universality, is drawn to work for humanity, to uplift humanity and to establish in humanity the operation of an instrument greater than the instrument of the mind, to develop supramentality by which a new world order can be securely established, - a new world order which has come to be glimpsed from time to time, such as that of the kingdom of heaven on the earth. That new world order has still to be worked out and realized, not merely for the fulfillment of a few individuals but for all, increasingly and progressively.

If we make a serious study of history, as Sri Aurobindo has done in his two major works, "The Ideal of Human Unity"
and "The Human Cycle", we shall find that humanity has reached at the present juncture of its development at a point where the search for the ideal law of social development has become inevitable. According to Sri Aurobindo, if that search and its results cannot be implemented, there is bound to be the development of a situation as the one that obtains today. Sri Aurobindo calls that situation as that of evolutionary crisis.

Sri Aurobindo points out that human history may be considered as a long story of the sway of the developing consciousness between three pre-occupations of human

idealism, — the complete single development of the human being himself, the perfectibility of the individual, a full development of the collective being, the perfectibility of the society, and, more pragmatically restricted, the perfect or best possible relation of individual with individual and society or of community with community.15 Hence, we find in human history that sometimes an exclusive or dominant emphasis is laid on the individual, sometimes on the collectivity and society, sometimes on a right and balanced relationship between the individual and the collectivity. According to one ideal, freedom and growth of perfection of the individual is to be held up as a true objective of our existence. This ideal is sometimes conceived as that of a mere free self-expression of the personal being or a self-governed whole of complete mind, fine and ample life and perfect body or a spiritual perfection and liberation. In the perspective of this view, the society is conceived only as a field of activity and growth for the individual mind and serves best its function when it gives as far as possible a wide room, ample means, a sufficient freedom or guidance of development to his thought, his action, his growth, his possibility of fullness of being. The opposite ideal gives to collective life the first or sole importance; the existence, the growth of the race is of the highest value in this view; the individual is expected to live for the society or human kind or even, he is considered only a cell of the society and he has no other use or purpose of birth, no other meaning of his presence in Nature, no other foundation. Or, it is sometimes held that the nation, the
society, the community is a collective being, revealing its soul in its culture, power of life, ideas, institutions, or its ways of self expression. In this context, the individual life has to cast itself in the social mould, serving the power of its life, consent only to exist as an instrument for the maintenance and

efficient existence of the society. In a third ideal, the perfection of man lies in his ethical and social relations with other human beings, his social being and his love for society, for others, for his utility to the race. In this view, society exists for the service of all, to give them the right framework of relations, education, training, economical opportunity, and right frame of life.

Sri Aurobindo points out that in the ancient cultures, the greatest emphasis was laid on the community and a fitting of the individual into the community. Even then, however, there grew up an ideal of a perfect individual and it is found that the idea of the spiritual individual as a perfect individual was dominant in ancient India, although the society was of extreme importance and the individual had to pass first to the social status of the physical, vital, mental being before he could reach fitness for the true state of free spiritual existence, — for the state of liberation or moksha from the bonds of Nature or Prakriti. In contrast to this, Sri Aurobindo finds that in recent times, the whole stress has fallen on the life of the race to search for a perfect society, and the right organization and scientific mechanization of the life of humankind as a whole. Under this circumstance, the individual now tends to be regarded only as a member of the collectivity, as a unit of the race whose existence must be subordinated to the common aims and total interest of the organized society, and much less or not at all as a mental or spiritual being with his own right and power of existence. The conflict between the individual and the collectivity has, however, continued to persist, and a stage has been reached at present when there is an acute conflict of standards, which presses us towards a search for a unifying and harmonizing knowledge, and even integrality of knowledge.

In Sri Aurobindo's view, the individual is the key of the evolutionary movement;16 for it is the individual who finds himself and becomes conscious of the Reality and his relationship with the collectivity. Indeed, Sri Aurobindo acknowledges that so long as human being is undeveloped, he has to subordinate himself, particularly his undeveloped self, to whatever is greater than it. As he develops, he moves towards a spiritual freedom, but this freedom is not something entirely separate from all existence. As he moves towards spiritual freedom, he moves also towards spiritual oneness. And yet, for the awakened individual the realization of his truth of being and his liberation and perfection must be his primary seeking. For, firstly, that is the call of the Spirit within him, and, secondly, it is only by liberation and perfection and realization of the truth of being that man can arrive at truth of living. Sri Aurobindo points out that a perfected community can exist only by the perfection of its individuals, and perfection can come only by the discovery and affirmation in life by each of his own spiritual being and the discovery by all of that spiritual unity and a resultant life of unity. There can be no real perfection for the individual and for the society except through the inner self and truth of spiritual existence; the individual has to take up all truths of the instrumental existence into oneself and give to it oneness, integration, harmony. The real freedom comes to individual by the discovery and disengagement of the spiritual reality from its bondage to Nature and its instruments; and our only means of true perfection is the sovereignty and self-effectuation of the spiritual Reality in all the elements and instruments of our nature.

The problems of the conflict between the individual and the collectivity become more and more acute depending upon

the framework in which these problems are confronted, depending upon whether the framework is built on the principle of centralization or that of decentralization, whether freedom and diversity are allowed to contribute to richness and vigour and to the health and cohesion. And these problems cannot be solved, unless an ideal law of social development is discovered and applied. Sri Aurobindo discovers and formulates the ideal law of social development that can be applied, if the world is to be united and which is yet to provide to the individual the needed freedom of his growth, self-discovery, self-realisation and self-perfection. Sri Aurobindo states this law in the following words:

"Thus the law for the individual is to perfect his individuality by free development from within, but to respect and to aid and be aided by the same free development in others. His law is to harmonise his life with the life of the social aggregate and to pour himself out as a force for growth and perfection on humanity. The law for the community or nation is equally to perfect its corporate existence by a free development from within, aiding; and taking full advantage of that of the individual, but to respect and to aid and be aided by the same free development «of other communities and nations. Its law is to harmonise its; life with that of the human aggregate and to pour itself out as a force for growth and perfection on humanity. The law for humanity is to pursue its upward evolution towards the finding and expression of the Divine in the type of mankind, taking full advantage of the free development and gains of all individuals and nations and groupings of men, to work towards the day when mankind may be really and not only ideally one divine family, but even then, when it has succeeded in unifying itself, to respect, aid and be aided by the free growth and activity of its individuals

and constituent aggregates."17

Sri Aurobindo acknowledges that this ideal law has never become operative in the imperfect states through which humankind has so far travelled, and it may be very long before that law can be attained. But Sri Aurobindo maintains that the present is the stage of what he calls the subjective age of humanity, when knowledge is increasing and diffusing itself with an unprecedented rapidity, when individuals, societies and nations are attempting to discover their potentialities and their inner subjective states and selves, when capacity is generating itself, when men and nations are drawn close together; this is the time when we can justifiably develop a conscious hope to arrive at a conscious discovery of that ideal law of social development and its conscious application. He finds that the present moment is opportune for an upward march, particularly when people of the entire globe are getting united, although partially and in an inextricable entanglement of chaotic unity. For this is the moment where we are being compelled to know each other and impelled to know more profoundly ourselves, humankind, and the world, and when the idea of self-realisation for ourselves and nations is coming consciously to the upper and outer surface. This is the time, according to Sri Aurobindo, for the human being, in particular, to know himself, to find the ideal law of his being and his development and to hold that law before him and to find out gradually the way by which it can become more and more moulding principle of the individual and social existence.

Contemporary Age of Reason and the Ideals of
Liberty, Equality and Fraternity

At the same time, Sri Aurobindo regards the present

moment of human history as a moment of acute crisis. For the process of self-realisation, both for the individual and the collectivity, is always difficult, and it is marked by an acute struggle of groping in the darkness and the welter of conflicts and uncertain alternatives. In Sri Aurobindo's analysis of the psychology of the process of maturation of self-finding, Sri Aurobindo examines in his work, "The Human Cycle", the psychology of barbarism, philistinism, and of the rational, ethical and aesthetic culture; he also examines the means by which the society manages to arrive at some kind of cohesion at different stages of development, namely, through symbolism and later by typal thought, conventional thought and by subjective self-awakening, both of the individual and collectivity. In the subjective age, which is marked by preponderance of Reason as also by revolt against conventions, customs and traditions, Sri Aurobindo perceives the possibility of true flowering of the inner spirit, which can harmonise the individual good. and the social good, and in the context of which progressive forms of world unity could be sought to be invented so that human beings of the entire globe would be able to live together in progressive states of peace and harmony.

In this context, Sri Aurobindo finds those three great ideals that were put forward forcefully during the French Revolution to be most significant, namely, the ideals of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. He finds that these three ideals served the purpose of motivating great experiments that humankind conducted during the curve of the Rational Age,18 the Age which was ushered in by the Renaissance in Europe, — the age through which humankind is at present passing, and the age which has now reached an end that signals the possibility of opening the gates of a new age.

During the Age of the Reason, there has been rapid exploration of the possibilities and capacities of the human race in its march towards self-realisation and self-perfection. For a long time, Reason conducted its search on the assumption and faith that it can successfully create right means and systems and can govern the process of progress towards its highest fulfillment. This age of Reason, after good deal of experimentation, is able to perceive, dimly at first but more and more clearly in due course, that the role of Reason is not to govern but to become a medium and an intermediate power that can lift human life from the levels of blind impulse to the realms of the light of the Spirit. It is becoming clearer that the real governor can only be that light and knowledge, which is integral and which unites the individual with the universal without requiring the individual to be abolished and which shows, both to the individual and to the universal, that their source is in the same transcendental that is the foundation of oneness and unity of existence.

The Age of Reason, according to Sri Aurobindo, has shown that when the ideal of liberty is emphasized and sought to be implemented, the ideal of equality tends to be sacrificed; and when the ideal of equality is emphasized and sought to be implemented, the ideal of liberty tends to be strangulated. Towards the end of the Age of Reason, there emerges, therefore, the ideal of anarchism and the question arises whether anarchist thought can any more successfully find a satisfying social principle. Sri Aurobindo points out that the anarchist thought, although it is not yet formed in its assured form, cannot develop any appropriate basis for harmony as long as it relies on the powers of the intellect. He points out that rationality cannot give to humanity safety from the pull from lower existence of the Unreason, nor deliver it from the

attraction that comes from higher regions of the Spirit. In due course, there will be increasing pressure to replace the outer law by the inner law, and there is bound to be pressure also to demand from the State the abolition of governmental compulsion. But this would also mean increasing demand on human beings to live together by free agreement and co-operation. But free agreement and co-operation can truly be secured by a power greater than that of Reason. On this line of development, Sri Aurobindo points out that it is not intellectual anarchism but a spiritual or spiritualized anarchism that can bring us nearer to the solution or at least touch something of it from afar. As Sri Aurobindo points out:

"It is a spiritual, an inner freedom that can alone create a perfect human order. It is a spiritual, a greater than the rational
enlightenment that can alone illumine the vital nature of man and impose harmony on its self-seekings, antagonisms and discords. A deeper brotherhood, a yet unfound law of love is the only sure foundation possible for a perfect social evolution, no other can replace it. But this brotherhood and love will not proceed by the vital instincts or the reason where they can be met, baffled or deflected by opposite reasoning and other discordant instincts. Nor will it found itself in the natural heart of man where there are plenty of other passions to combat it. It is in the soul that it must find its roots; the love which is founded upon a deeper truth of our being, the brotherhood or, let us say, — for this is another feeling than any vital or mental sense of brotherhood, a calmer more durable motive-force, — the spiritual comradeship which is the expression of an inner realization of oneness. For so only can egoism disappear and the true individualism of the unique godhead in each man found itself on the true communism of the equal godhead in the race; for the Spirit, the inmost Self,

the universal Godhead in every being is that whose very nature of diverse oneness it is to realize the perfection of its individual l

life and nature in the existence of all, in the universal life and nature."19

Contemporary Evolutionary Crisis

According to Sri Aurobindo, the present age of human development has a possibility of becoming a gate for the arrival of a Spiritual Age in which the ideal of brotherhood can come to be practised; it is only in that condition that a new form of human unity can be forged in which the individual and the collectivity, even on a global scale of organization, can come to be harmonized. In the meantime, however, it is to be realized that the advent of the Spiritual Age and even a transition to that advent is bound to be difficult, and it is, in fact, riddled with a series of crisis. And there are deeper reasons for this crisis.

Sri Aurobindo considers the present stage of crisis as an evolutionary crisis in which the human will is called upon to make a free choice. This is the crisis where the human reason has evolved up to a point where it is obliged to play the role of lifting up humanity to create a life of unity, mutuality and harmony. On the other hand, there is a force that is striving to assert stark barbarism which has still survived in the civilized man. There is thus an acute conflict between the ideals of Reason and the gravitational pull of barbarism supported by Unreason. Within the larger framework of this conflict, there are three alternative possibilities, which are also in conflict with each other. For it is possible that the humankind may be able to utilize the present scientific and technical knowledge to such an extent that an order of existence can be created in

which physical and vital wants of the human being can greatly, if not fully, be satisfied, and it may also be conceived that this order of existence can be maintained by mechanical devices and application of the power of machines. This possibility may push humanity to the creation of a framework that can be sustained only by the imprisonment of the human spirit. There is also a second alternative in which human reason can continue to spin out larger or narrower circles propounding great dreams but find itself unable to fulfill them. But there is also a third alternative in which the human beings might consent to rise to the higher levels than those of the Reason and consent to be spiritualized.

The central question rests on the power of the Reason and the answer that the Reason can give to the issue that faces the present evolutionary moment. It is easy for Reason to refuse to make a choice; it is easy for Reason to spin itself so as to develop arguments against the need to open up the domains of the supra-rational consciousness; it is difficult for Reason to resist the cacophony of declarations that the supra-rational is non-existent or unreal and that the best counsel for Reason is to limit its activities to the practical and immediate problems of the material existence in the world. It is true that the demand of the present evolutionary moment may push a forward progression of the human race, and the inner spiritual necessity may even seem to be overwhelming. But if the pressure of that necessity is refused or renounced, there is bound to occur a crisis. In fact, that crisis is already to be found behind the contemporary crisis that we find in various domains of sociology, politics and economics. In reality that crisis is what Sri Aurobindo calls an evolutionary crisis.

An evolutionary crisis can occur only at an extremely crucial moment of the life of a species. It occurs when a

certain level of consciousness has effected an ascent to the next level of consciousness, when is has integrated the powers and activities of the lower consciousness into those of the higher level of consciousness, and when the integrated powers have achieved acute subtilisation and refinement necessitating a leap into a still higher level of consciousness. If, at that moment, there is obstruction or failure to secure the necessary push, a crisis sets in which continues to concentrate on the issue of the next step of the ascent until the necessary conditions are created which would facilitate the ascent or mutation of the species. Or else, if there is repeated failure, the concerned species becomes extinct or stagnant, and a new species develops on another line of evolution through which ascent to a higher level can be effected. From the point of view of evolution, humanity today seems to have reached a critical point; this is evidenced by the fact that its highest faculty of Reason has reached acute subtilisation and amplitude of multisided development. At the same time, having reached that stage of accomplishment, the limitations of the Reason have been made bare and acknowledged. It is very clear that Reason cannot govern the society and lead it to embody those ideals which it places before it. It becomes clearer that the higher powers lying behind Reason need to be discovered, but they are being blocked by the achieved circuit of grooves set up by Reason. It is only if Reason consents to allow the greater powers to rise to a new stage of the ascent that further progress of humanity could be possible. Or else, Nature will have to pursue her evolutionary curve to manifest the supramental power through another line of evolution.

At the present stage of evolution, Sri Aurobindo considers the contemporary stress on the material and economic life to be the first peril. For this stress may lead to the resurgence of

barbarism in the present set up of civilization. This danger could be further accentuated, if Reason ceases to collaborate with the evolutionary urge that is pressing forward for a new ascent of consciousness. As Sri Aurobindo points out:

"The first danger is a resurgence of the old vital and material primitive barbarian in a civilized form; the means Science has put at our disposal eliminates the peril of the subversion and destruction of an effete civilization by stronger primitive peoples, but it is the resurgence of the barbarian in ourselves, in civilised man, that is the peril, and this we see all around us. For that is bound to come if there is no high and strenuous mental and moral ideal controlling and uplifting the vital and physical man in us and no spiritual ideal liberating him from himself into his inner being. Even if this relapse is escaped, there is another danger, — for a cessation of the evolutionary urge, crystallization into a stable comfortable mechanized social living without ideal or outlook is another possible outcome. Reason by itself cannot long maintain the race in its progress; it can do so only if it is a mediator between the life and body and something higher and greater within him; for it is the inner spiritual necessity, the push from what is there yet unrealized within him that maintains in him, once he has attained to mind, the evolutionary stress, the spiritual nisus. That renounced, he must either relapse and begin all over again or disappear like other forms of life before him as an evolutionary failure, through incapacity to maintain or to serve the evolutionary urge. At the best he will remain arrested in some kind of mediary typal perfection, like other animal kinds, while Nature pursues her way beyond him to a greater creation."²⁰

The constructions that have been built up so far in human life have been a combination of association and regulated

conflict; these have been imperfect mental constructions struggling to create frameworks of accommodation of egos and interests grouped or dovetailed into each other; they are attempts at consolidation by common general life-motives, a unification by need and the pressure of struggle with outside forces. But as humanity moves forward, it is becoming clearer that the evolution of Mind working upon Life has developed an organization of the activity of Mind and use of Matter which can no longer be supported by human capacity without an inner change. Humanity has reached a point where demands of unity, perfect mutuality, and harmony have become imperative. Humanity has developed a structure of external life, and this structure has become more and more huge and complex; on the other hand, it is becoming clearer that this hugeness and complexity cannot be handled by limited mental capacity and understanding; there is an increasing pressure to expand spiritual and moral capacity, if man is to escape disastrous consequences of continued blunders of his ego and appetites. The burden that is being laid on humankind is too great for the present littleness of the human personality and its petty mind and small life instincts. The scale of life has become too large for the human reason and will to handle. As Sri Aurobindo points out, the problem is fundamental and in putting it, evolutionary Nature in man is confronting herself with a critical choice which must one day be solved in the true sense if the race is to arrive and even to survive. The solution can be reached only if there appears in humanity a greater whole-being, whole-knowledge, whole-power; for then alone all that is being developed, can be welded into a greater unity of whole-life.

Describing briefly the nature of the contemporary crisis and its remedy, Sri Aurobindo states:

"At present mankind is undergoing an evolutionary crisis in which is concealed a choice of its destiny; for a stage has been reached in which the human mind has achieved in certain directions an enormous development while in others it stands arrested and bewildered and can no longer find its way. A structure of the external life has been raised up by man's ever-active mind and life-will, a structure of an unmanageable hugeness and complexity, for the service of his mental, vital, physical claims and urges, a complex political, social, administrative, economic, cultural machinery, an organized collective means for his intellectual, sensational, aesthetic and material satisfaction. Man has created a system of civilization which has become too big for his limited mental capacity and understanding and his still more limited spiritual and moral capacity to utilize and manage, a too dangerous servant of his blundering ego and it appetites. For no greater seeing mind, no intuitive soul of knowledge has yet come to his surface of consciousness which could make this basic fullness of life a condition for the free growth of something that exceeded it. ...The evolution of human mind and life must necessarily lead towards an increasing universality; but on a basis of ego and segmenting and dividing mind this opening to the universal can only create a vast pullulation of unaccorded ideas and impulses, a surge of enormous powers and desires, a chaotic mass of unassimilated and intermixed mental, vital and physical material of a larger existence which, because it is not taken up by a creative harmonising light of the Spirit, must welter in a universalized confusion and discord out of which it is impossible to build a greater harmonic life. Man has harmonized life in the past by organized ideation and limitation; he has created societies based on fixed ideas or fixed customs, a fixed cultural system or an organic life-

system, each with its own order; the throwing of all these into the melting-pot of a more and more intermingling life and a pouring in of ever new ideas and motives and facts and possibilities call for a new, a greater consciousness to meet and master the increasing potentialities of existence and harmonise them. Reason and Science can only help by standardizing, by fixing everything into an artificially arranged and mechanized unity of material life. A greater whole-being, whole-knowledge, whole-power is needed to weld all into a greater unity of whole-life."²¹

Integral Yoga and Its Aid to the Evolutionary Crisis

The issue for the contemporary humanity is thus, according to Sri Aurobindo, that of a farther step in evolution which would bring about manifestation of the comprehensive consciousness and power on the earth. The entire effort of the integral yoga that has been developed by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother aims at this manifestation which can weld all into a greater unity of whole-life. But this manifestation cannot be brought about, according to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, by seeking refuge in a return to the religious idea and a society governed or sanctioned by religion. As Sri Aurobindo points out, organized religion, though it can provide a means of inner uplift for the individual and preserve in it or behind it a way for its opening into spiritual experience, has not changed human life and society. Religion, in governing society, had to compromise with the lower parts of life and could not insist on the inner change of the whole-being. As a result, it could insist only on a credal adherence, a formal acceptance of its ethical standards and conformity to institution, ceremony and ritual. Religion, therefore, can generalize to some extent an incomplete spiritual tendency, but it cannot transform the

race, and it cannot create a new principle of the human existence. Sri Aurobindo points out that only a total spiritual direction given to the whole life and the whole nature can lift humanity beyond itself.

Sri Aurobindo points out the need of the discipline and the way by which each individual can be developed in accordance with his or her line of development towards integrality and all-embracing perfection. At the same time, there is a need to create a process of social development by which the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity can be harmonized. Ordinary means which have been so far utilized for securing social progress have failed to harmonise these ideals; even when liberty and equality have to some extent been pursued and even when they have sought to be accommodated with each other, there has never occurred any satisfying harmonization. The ideal of fraternity has hardly been attempted, and that is because fraternity demands the awakening of the inmost soul of man and manifestation of the soul-power in governing social development. As a result, it can be seen that liberty and equality can have a chance of harmonization only by the power of fraternity, and these three ideals, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, can be harmonized only by a total spiritual direction to the integrality of life and nature. As Sri Aurobindo points out:

"Yet is brotherhood the real key....The union of liberty and equality can only be achieved by the power of human brotherhood and it cannot be founded on anything else. But brotherhood exists only in the soul and by the soul; it can exist by nothing else. For this brotherhood is not a matter either of physical kinship or of vital association or of intellectual agreement. When the soul claims freedom, it is the freedom of its self-development, the self-development of the divine in

man in all his being. When it claims equality, what it is claiming is that freedom equally for all and the recognition of the same soul, the same godhead in all human beings. When it strives for brotherhood, it is founding that equal freedom of self-development on a common aim, a common life, a unity of mind and feeling founded upon the recognition of this inner spiritual unity. These three things are in fact the nature of the soul; for freedom, equality, unity are the eternal attributes of the Spirit."22

According to Sri Aurobindo, the human ego and vital nature have been found too strong for religion to arrive at any measurable success. Even the idea of the guidance of society by men of spiritual attainment, and the idea of the brotherhood or unity of all in the faith or in the discipline to strive by a religion cannot succeed. The solution that Sri Aurobindo proposes is the full emergence of the soul, the full descent of the supermind which is the native light and power of the integral Transcendental Reality and the consequent replacement or transformation and uplifting of our insufficient mental and vital nature by a spiritual and supramental Supernature.

Sri Aurobindo acknowledges that at first sight this insistence on a radical change of nature might seem to put off all the hope of humanity to a distant evolutionary future; but even if this were so, Sri Aurobindo points out that it would still remain the sole possibility for the transmutation of life; for to hope for a true change of human life without a change of human nature is an irrational and unspiritual proposition. Hence, if this is not the solution, then there is no solution. Then the terrestrial evolution must pass beyond man as it has passed beyond the animal and a greater race must come that will be capable of the spiritual change, a form of life must be

born that is nearer to the divine.

At the same time, Sri Aurobindo points out that the solution that he proposes is not altogether distant, and it is not radically impossible. As Sri Aurobindo states:

"But what is demanded by this change is not something altogether distant, alien to our existence and radically impossible; for what has to be developed is there in our being and not something outside it: what evolutionary Nature presses for, is an awakening to the knowledge of self, the discovery of self, the manifestation of the self and spirit within us and the release of its self-knowledge, its self-power, its native self-instrumentation. It is, besides, a step for which the whole of evolution has been a preparation and which is brought closer at each crisis of human destiny when the mental and vital evolution of the being touches a point where intellect and vital force reach some acme of tension and there is a need either for them to collapse, to sink back into a torpor of defeat or a repose of unprogressive quiescence or to rend their way through the veil against which they are straining. What is necessary is that there should be a turn in humanity felt by some or many towards the vision of this change, a feeling of its imperative need, the sense of its possibility, the will to make it possible in themselves and to find the way. That trend is not absent and it must increase with the tension of the crisis in human world-destiny; the need of an escape or a solution, the feeling that there is no other solution than the spiritual cannot but grow and become more imperative under the urgency of critical circumstance. To that call in the being there must always be some answer in the Divine Reality and
in Nature."²³